My interview experience consisted of two rounds over more than a month. The first round was with HR and the Hiring Manager, and the second was with a Project Manager and a Research Manager. I successfully completed both. The first round focused primarily on the results of my pre-assessment personality test. It was largely informational, with a few non-technical questions. Unfortunately, many of my questions about the organization went unanswered. They described a self-directed team structure, but the organizational hierarchy and the Project Manager's role seemed unclear, especially in relation to their functional managers. The second round consisted entirely of hypothetical, "what would you do in this case" questions. These scenarios felt unrealistic, and I'm unsure how they effectively differentiate candidates. Following the second round, there was a significant delay in communication. Overall, the interview process was quite demanding, yet the second round didn't seem to add significant value or offer a distinct assessment compared to the first. It felt as though, after passing the first round, the final candidate selection might be based more on subjective impressions than on the merits demonstrated in the interview process.

Standard TNO procedure - CV & motivation letter for screening, followed by a 2-stage conversational interview step, with no additional steps. Quite a disappointing experience from the recruitment perspective. A generally messy recruitment process and a rejection based on experiences that were not discussed in the interview due to lack of time. It felt as if the recruiter had made up their mind before the interview took place and was looking for any reason not to proceed with the process. TNO does such cool research and is very well connected to a variety of stakeholders in society making applications widely possible. It appears senior leadership is truly interested in finding the right people for their teams but maybe not as invested, which leads to recruitment having a strong say in the decision making. It is my experience that recruitment is sadly and certainly not up to par with senior leadership in terms of professionalism, which opens doors to all kinds of biases to shine through. To make it practical for the non-Dutch native applicants: unless you have the exact qualifications they ask for (and then some more), I wouldn't bother applying and wasting time as the mediocre recruitment sooner or later in the process will find a way to eliminate you from this unfair contest for the role. A pity, as I do believe a lot of relevant and interesting work is to be found within TNO's ecosystem, and a lot of senior leadership have extensive experience in their fields. But, alas, to get there one needs to melt the walls of narrow-minded, biased recruitment first...